


(Don't) Save Me, I'm (Too) Broken

by Ficlet-Machine (Wordsmith)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Caring Partner!Hux, Depression, Eating Disorders, Established Relationship, Graphic Descriptions of Mental Illness, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Strong Emotional Content, Suicide Attempt, hurt!Kylo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7948510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordsmith/pseuds/Ficlet-Machine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo is broken beyond repair - he knows this. He's terrified of the day Hux realizes it, because how could a man like that love something as ugly and useless as Kylo? No one ever has before, so why would Hux be any different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Don't) Save Me, I'm (Too) Broken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thegoodlannister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodlannister/gifts).



> Written for @thegoodlannister. The prompt was: _"stupid sappy hurt/comfort where Kylo refuses to admit he's not feeling well because he's afraid Hux won't want him anymore if he's even more broken right here?"_
> 
> It turned one helluva lot darker than "stupid sappy hurt/comfort", so I cannot stress the need to heed the warnings and tags above! Seriously HEED THE TAGS!

It had started again. The darkness creeping around the edges of his world, slowly draining it of every last little bit of color and light, as Kylo found it harder to breathe from the the anxiety tightening around his insides like a vice. He wasn't too sure what started it this time, there were no pointers. Starkiller was months behind them, his training complete, Snoke dead, and their new Empire emerging steadily from the ashes of everything burnt in sacrifice for it.  
This was a good time. A happy time. He was supposed to be happy, dammit! He was supposed to feel hopeful, victorious, burning up inside from the love and affection he was showered in by Hux. Everything was going right, and Kylo had made such progress! He was supposed to be quite literally on top of the world right now.

_So why wasn't he?_

He'd felt it coming, but didn't realize in time what was happening, and now he was powerless against the barrage of unwanted thoughts and feelings from his own mind. There was so much emptiness left where his master's presence used to be - like a dark void; hollow, empty. He was so tired all the time. In the beginning, he'd needed the rest to recover, and Hux had made sure he'd get plenty of it - so no one thought it was odd if he didn't show up before noon. Hux was just glad he slept at all, so he never questioned Kylo's new sleeping habits. But he really should have. They all should have. Kylo could sleep 18 standard hours and still feel like every limb in his body was made of stone - so heavy, so difficult to move, to coordinate, to persuade into doing anything for longer than an hour or so. He felt weak, fatigued, like some giant space leech was sucking the energy right out of him, and no matter what he did he couldn't stop it.  
Then what little appetite he had went out the viewport. Everything tasted like ashes in his mouth, the food seemed to grow each time he chewed it, and he could barley make himself swallow it for fear it would just come back up. It did, sometimes. He hid it well. He hid everything too well. They were used to his sensitive stomach - him throwing up after a meal wasn't unusual. No one questioned it anymore, so no one noticed when it started happening more often.  
Anxiety clawed at his insides at all hours of the day. He'd made it an art form to get out of a room before he had a panic attack in front of people. No one ever knew. Especially not Hux. He must never know. His brave, strong, brilliant General deserved only the best. And that was the most painful knowledge in Kylo's whole, pathetic life: Kylo wasn't good enough. He never would be.

He reminded himself of this over and over when the depression hit the stage where sleep stopped coming for him - when he was left alone with his anguish in the small hours of the night, hidden away in his training room, or some dark, undisturbed corner of the ship. He would never be good enough. He'd stopped being useful when there were no more battles to be fought, no more Rebels to catch or kill. All Kylo was ever meant to be was a weapon, a tool. He was useless now. To Hux, to the First Order, to all of them.  
One day, he reminded himself, digging his own mental claws into that raw wound in his mind, Hux would realize this. Hux would see what a pitiful, broken, useless thing Kylo Ren really was, and he would leave. That's what they all did, wasn't it? They claimed to love him pulled him into sweet embraces, promises of family and belonging, or at least protection and purpose - but as soon as they realized he was broken, faulty, a mistake, they would always leave. Sure, the General might think he'd loved Kylo - they'd come together in a very desperate time, and everyone knew that desperation sometimes made people think they felt things that turned out to be completely wrong once things settled down.  
Han and Leia, for instance, had come together during a war like this - fueled by fear and desperation - and once life went back to a normal, boring routine, they'd realized they had nothing left to say to each other. All they had was bitterness and a child neither of them understood or wanted.

In his desperation he'd turned right back to old ways of his - trying to cope, to hang in there by any means necessary, eternally glad for his robes and the way the covered everything up. They didn't need to see, they didn't need to know what he did to himself in order to keep pushing himself to be useful, to be enough despite everything he felt. He couldn't risk Hux sending him away, he couldn't!

The constant blood-loss, the sleep deprivation, the starvation eventually got to him. He should have known it would, but Kylo had long since forgot where the limits of his body lay - all he knew how to do was to keep going until someone told him to stop. Everyone were so busy, so full of purpose, so happy - no one told him to stop. He was just another weapon left in a corner to rust up - they didn't understand that he didn't know better. They didn't understand that he didn't know how to be anything _but_ that weapon, that he needed someone to tell him what to do, how to feel, when to stop. Left to his own devices the only thing he could do was to self destruct. Everything was just spinning out of control, and he _couldn't_ stop himself.

Hux shouldn't have to deal with that. Hux deserved better, deserved someone who wasn't tearing at every seam, deserved someone who was a whole person, and not this chronically depressed, anxiety-ridden mess of a person. And as soon as Hux realized just how broken Kylo was, that these depressions would always keep coming back, he'd leave. He'd leave, and Kylo would have nothing left. _Again_.

Then came the day he broke. The reason was as pathetic as he was: Hux had been spending the day negotiating with a person from the planet they were currently orbiting - Kylo couldn't remember its name, though he was sure they'd told him several times - it was a human woman, and she was beautiful. They looked so good next to each other as they walked through the corridors on the way to the conference room, so regal, dignified, shining. They seemed to get along remarkably well, too. She had made Hux smile at one point, and Kylo had had to excuse himself to go throw up. He couldn't stop thinking about Hux taking the Imperial throne with a woman like that by his side. His popularity would skyrocket with an Empress like that. Not to mention she could give him heirs that would be his by blood, not just adoption - something that Kylo would never be able to - and he knew Hux wanted children one day, had seen it in his mind once.

Kylo knew then that it was time he gave up. He had nothing to give Hux but worry and pain.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hux followed the signal from Kylo's tracker further and further down the levels of the ship - his worry giving away to fear more and more with each step. Kylo had been in a bad shape for a while now, but in the beginning Hux thought it was just some lingering effects of the whole Starkiller debacle paired with the exhaustion from his battle with Snoke for his freedom. But all of it had been over and done with for almost a solid year now, and Kylo's progress had halted a while back. Now, his Knight seemed to be slipping downhill again, and Hux didn't know what to do.  
He was always so busy, there was never enough time for him to take care of Kylo the way he promised him he would. He'd sat by his bedside after Starkiller, holding his hand, stroking his hair, promising to devote his life to his safety and happiness if he would just _wake the kriff up_! And now his days were full of meetings, and planning, and coercing, and more planning, and the paperwork was starting to take a severe toll on his hands. He barely even saw Kylo during the days - his duties carrying him away to all the wrong places - and when Hux finally collapsed in bed, he'd be out like a light before he could even say goodnight. 

A few weeks ago, he'd started finding little bloodstains on the sheets, in the 'fresher, and he'd noticed how Kylo shied away from the slightest of touches whenever he wasn't covered by his robes. He used to wait for Hux so they could shower together, but now he'd always wait until Hux had gone to bed.  
Then the kitchen droids had sent a worried message, asking him if the food had failed to meet master Ren's standards, because it kept coming back untouched. He asked how long it had been going on. Weeks, they said, and then Hux began trying to keep an eye on the way Kylo's robes hung on his frame. It worried him that they seemed to sit looser on him every time he looked, and the way he sometimes had to lean against things, or grip onto them for support when he stood up - as if he thought he was going to faint - didn't help matters at all.

But Hux had seen him in some rather horrid physical states before, and knew he was more sturdy than he looked. What really got his alarm bells ringing was the way Kylo didn't speak like a person anymore, didn't destroy anything, didn't display that raw force they'd all come to know as his only way of handling his own mind. He simply withdrew. He spoke only short sentences, monotonous, low - and only if spoken to. He sounded like he barely had energy to open his mouth. His eyes - those deep, dark pools with a thousand stars in them - that Hux had fallen so in love with and that always gave away his every thought had become dull, listless, empty. The eyes of a doll; beautiful, but dead.

Hux knew he wasn't the best partner. Nothing in his upbringing had left him equipped to handle something so delicate, frail, intense, as Kylo's heart and mind - and he often found himself sorely lacking the knowledge how to make things better for this beautiful, broken person who'd entrusted him with his very life. But he tried. He really did try. He was quickly learning now that it hadn't been enough. He had been neglectful of Kylo in a way that was frankly inexcusable - regardless of his workload - and now Kylo had gone missing. 

Hux was so scared he felt sick thinking about what that might mean.

Finally, down in one of the empty brig areas, the tracker informed him that Kylo was behind the next door - in the empty guard room - and he wasn't moving. Kylo always moved around - pacing the spaces he occupied like some wild animal. A thought came unbidden, unwelcome, that many species of wild animals withdrew from their packs when it was time for them to die - went somewhere dark and quiet where no one would follow, and faced their deaths alone. That had Hux punching the entrance code hard enough to damn near break the console in his desperation to get to his beloved.

The door opened, and for the rest of his life the image he saw would be burned into his mind, as he threw himself at Kylo, forcing his saber out of his hands before he could carry out the motion his hands had set. He kicked the accursed weapon as far away as he could, and pulled Kylo into his arms, holding him tightly and rocking him like a child.  
At first, Kylo didn't even seem to register what was happening, his eyes had this look to them - this distant look - like he wasn't even really present. Hux kissed his face, his hair, pulled the gloves of his hands and kissed them, and this seemed to be just enough to snap Kylo back into the moment. 

"Hux…?" he whispered, bewildered, as if Hux wasn't supposed to be here right now. As if Hux wasn't supposed to find him.

"Don't do this, Kylo!" was all Hux managed to say. "Don't you dare leave me! Not like this. _Not like this!_ "

He was crying now. Big, ugly tears streaming down his face, nose running and shoulders heaving as the severity of the situation caught up with him. Kylo cried too, though he hardly seemed aware of it - silent tears like a waterfall down his sunken face.

"You can't do this, Kylo," Hux repeated. "I love you, you fool. I love you _so much_ , do you hear me? Don't leave me here alone! Don't'- don't go where I can't follow you. I need you here."

"It's for… for the best," Kylo whispered. "I'm- I'm broken, Hux. I'm all broken up inside and I'm useless to you like this. You don't want me. You _don't_. I'm no use to you anymore. You'll see. You're gonna realize it to, and you leave me. Everyone always leaves me. I'm too broken. Not worth it." He pushed weakly at Hux' chest, as if to try and get away. "I'm useless to you. You have to let me go."

" _Useless?_ " Hux echoed, his voice rising to a pitch. "You listen to me, Kylo - you are not useless! You never were, and you never will be! Yes, you're a little broken and a little messed up - I know that. I've known that since we first met, and it doesn't matter to me. I _love_ you! I love you because you're you, not because of what I can get from you. You're not a tool, Kylo. You're my whole life, and I haven't been there for you the way I should, and that's all on me. You hear me? I'm so sorry I haven't been there for you like I promised I would. I'm so sorry people have hurt you so much, and I'm so sorry you can't trust me not to do the same. But if you die, Kylo - if you take your saber and you do what you were planning to do, I will follow you. Do you understand me? I will not live on if you're not here with me. I need you. I will _always_ need you."

"You… need me?" Kylo's voice in that moment was the smallest, youngest, most desperate and incredulous thing he'd ever heard. 

"Yes," Hux nodded, resting their foreheads together. "I need you. I'm doing all of this for you, Kylo. I'm building us an Empire so I can give you everything that you deserve, and everything you should have had but no one gave you. I don't care about the Order, about the throne, about some silly crown and fancy cape. I care about _you_. All I ever want in life is you, happy, next to me, forever. I'm so sorry for making you think I didn't. Please, my love. Will you let me try again? Will you let me take care of you?"

Kylo stared at him for what felt like forever, trying to process the implications of what Hux had just said.

"But I don't know if I'll ever be whole again," he said meekly. "What if I can't be fixed?"

"I'll still love you, and I'll still take care of you. Nothing will change that."

"I- I think I might need to see a doctor. I- I've, uhm, been doing things. To myself. Bad things. I… I don't think I should be left alone for a while."

It was as much of a 'yes' as Kylo was able to give at the moment, and Hux took it.

"Let me get you to med bay, and we'll go from there, okay?" Hux nodded, caressing his tangled hair. "We'll take one day at a time, love. Just one day at a time. I've almost lost you twice. I'm not going to risk a third. Just let me help you. Please."

"I… I don't think I can walk."

"Then don't." Hux got to his feet and gathered Kylo's diminished form in his arms, carrying him bridal style all the way to the med bay. It was easy - Kylo weighed almost nothing now, and Hux hated himself for allowing this to happen. But it would be alright now. He would make sure of it. He was not going to ever let Kylo get this bad again. No matter the cost, he was going to keep his promise. He was going to keep him safe - even from himself if needed be.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

The pale light of the moon shone through the window of their bedroom, illuminating Kylo's pale skin in a way that made him look like some ethereal, supernatural creature, and Hux swore to himself he could spend the rest of his life curled up in bed like this, watching Kylo sleep, and not miss a single thing. The soft rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyelids fluttered and his fingers twitched as he dreamed, the way his hair spread out like an inky, tangled halo around his head and all over Hux' chest… It was a blessing, nothing short of it.

It had taken them more than year to come to this point - the point where Kylo could sleep with only the slightest help from medications, no nightmares plaguing him, no memories disrupting his rest. They had taken up residence on Naboo, claiming the royal palace as their own. The improvement this planet had made on Kylo's recovery was immense. Everything here was so light, so soft - the warm climate and lush greenery proved a balm to the Knights ragged nerves, and Hux had had an entire garden designed just for him. Kylo could spend hours there, doing nothing but existing, knowing he was safe there. No one was allowed there but Hux, and even he waited for permission before stepping into this sanctuary. They took regular trips out to the country side, where they could be left alone by the demands of court life, and it was out there, in the middle of a blossoming field of flowers that Hux had dropped to one knee and asked for Kylo's hand in marriage. 

There were still bad days - the medics said some of the damage done was permanent, that some scars simply ran too deep - but Hux knew they were mild in comparison to everything they'd already been through. On those days, his Empire was left to its own devices as Hux focused his attention solely to Kylo. He'd meant it when he said he would never let Kylo deal with his darkness alone ever again.  
But the good days were becoming better and better, and they came both more frequently and in larger numbers, and every time Kylo laughed or smiled, Hux fell in love all over again. 

Next to him in bed, Kylo stirred slightly, eyes opening to peer sleepily up at Hux. Kissing him softly on the forehead, Hux smiled.

"Go back to sleep, love," he said. "I'm here."

Kylo nuzzled his chest, giving it a light kiss, before settling in again. Hux fell asleep soon after, so grateful for everything they had, knowing he almost lost it all down in an empty brig aboard his ship. He would never let that happen again, no matter the cost.


End file.
